This
Football Manager Blog aims to improve how you play FM17. From guides on training and tactics, to wonderkids and youth development. We want to share it all with you. We understand you want to be the best football manager you can be, so read on to learn all you can from this FM17 blog...

Football Manager Tips: Creating Lower League Tactics

Football Manager Tips: Creating Lower League Tactics

What are the best Lower League tactics on Football Manager?

When you play football manager, you might decide to give yourself a bit of a challenge by starting off with a team in one of the lower leagues. I have always been a fan of managing in the lower leagues, I do like the challenge of it and also it can be very rewarding if you do manage to have some success with the club you decide to manager. One of the more tricky aspects of managing in lower league is that the players, in some cases might not be that good. In this article I am going to advise how I would go about creating a tactic for lower league teams.

Review your squad and their attributes - It is very important, no matter what club you are managing to make sure you know every single player at your club well, especially in lower league where you will need to play youth players in your team to help make up the match day squad numbers. I do take a view on the star ratings of the players given by your coaches and assistant managers, but reviewing the players attributes at lower league level is much more important. For example, I have started a save file in India recently. Many of the players have a technique attribute of 5 and under. One of the first things I am looking to improve is the technique attributes of my players. This will take time though, so for now I need to check out other attributes and see how I can make the most of them. In my team for example I have a winger with decent pace and above average dribbling attributes for the I-League (Indian League). I am getting him to run at full backs and this is giving me alot of success.

Pick a tactic based on player attributes - Once you know what attributes are strong for each player, this will help you decide the player roles. Player roles are vital when creating tactics, its important at lower league level to create a balanced tactic, by this I mean to make sure on the left and right flanks and through the middle you keep a good shape. For example if you have a winger on attack on the left and he is not tracking back, this could create a weakness in your defense, likewise if you have a right winger who is not getting forward enough when attacking, you might be light of numbers in attack. At lower league level I like to to think of it that if you put a mirror down the middle of the pitch that both the right side of your formation and the left side would look the same.

The key to lower league tactics is to keep things simple. Do not add loads of team instructions telling them to retain possession of the ball, keeping it short, having the fullbacks overlapping etc, if you have too many team instructions this will confuse your players. You do need to have a game plan though and allowing or restricting player movement is the way to do it. So allowing your wingers and midfielders to be present in attack could be the way forward and then when defending you might decide that you want your wingers to help, in which case you would put your wingers on the support duty.

Think about player instructions rather than team instructions - I would recommend to put player roles on rather than team instructions. The team roles you can keep simple for restricting or allowing certain types of passing and then you might decide to have your fullbacks narrower so that the passing range is shorter. Thinking about space on the pitch when attacking and defending is the key to a successful tactic on football manager.

How do you set up your tactics for lower league teams on football manager?